35) The grammatical features of dialogues and communicative parts.

Dialogue – is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between 2 or more people.Dialogues can be opposed to each other both meaningfully and formally, and we may state that we can observe the main property of a grammatical category. We can oppose the dialogues and discover a Grammar of Conversations.We cannot show possible categories of this level in any dialogue because the majority of dialogues aren’t short or simple. We only enumerate several categories that seem most important for the formation of units of this level.The first and most general category is the category of social setting. The form of the dialogues indicates whether they belong to a wide (open) social setting or a narrow (close) social setting. The former type of the dialogues (open dialogues) presupposes a possibility of public observation. The latter (closed type) dialogue presupposes that public observation of it is not expected, participation in such dialogues is permitted only for members of closed groups such as families, friends, colleagues, etc. The dialogue shown in this section is an example of the type.

The next very broad category regulates the number of participants and differentiates dialogues with a fixed number of partners and those in which anyone can take part. Both dialogues represented here belong to the first, or fixed type. An example of the second, or unlimited type, can be mass media communication in which, at least officially, anyone can take part.

The next category is the category of social behaviour. This category opposes dialogues with formal expression of politeness to those in which politeness is not formalized.

We may also isolate several more general meanings that may be found in different dialogues, but their appearance in a dialogue changes it radically, thus creating a new one. For example, dialogues might be differentiated into those in which one of the partners is the leader of the event of communication and those in which none of the partners assumes the leading role. But such dialogues are different in all their aspects and thus are opposed as different units but not as variants of the same unit. That is why such oppositions cannot be treated as grammatical.

Communicative parts are seldom recognized as linguistic units. The reason is that dialogues or events of communication are usually divided into steps of communication comprising normally two or more remarks of different participants and united by a common topic. But even if we do it like that, each of the participants has his or her own aim and, accordingly, exerts his or her influence upon the partner. As shown in the section above, actual influence is exerted by a whole series of utterances of a participant, or a communicative partner. But since the communicative parts are not yet universally recognized, their analysis is done sporadically. As a result their features that might be considered grammatical have not yet been described. Because of that, in this section we shall not differentiate grammatical and non-grammatical features. Pragmatic analysis in this sphere produced at least three descriptive theories. Two of them are known as principles of communication and describe possible manners of performing communicative parts. In fact, these two theoretical frameworks are designed to register and explain the verbal behaviour of a communicant. The third system is aimed at defining and describing the strategic or meaningful aims of a communicant and is known as the matrix of the communicant.

№36. Maxims of conversation. The Politeness Principle

There are times when people say (or write) exactly what they mean, but generally they are not totally explicit. They manage to convey far more than their words mean, or even something quite different from the meaning of their words. Paul Grice attempted to explain how by means of rules (conventions) language users manage to understand each other. He defined the guidelines named Cooperative Principle which presupposes that conversation is governed by 4 basic rules, or Maxims of Conversation. They are:

1. the Maxim of Quality

do not say what you believe is to be false

do not say for what you lack adequate evidence

2. the Maxim of Quantity

make your contribution as informative as required

do not make your contribution more informative than it is required

3. the Maxim of Relevance

be relevant

4. the Maxim of Manner

be clear

be orderly

One more explanation of the fact why people are so often indirect was put forward by Leech, who introduced the Politeness Principle which runs as follows: minimize the expression of impolite beliefs, maximize the expression of polite beliefs. According to Leech, this principle is as valid as Cooperative Principle, because it helps to explain why people do not always observe Maxims of Conversation. Quite often we are indirect in what we say because we want to minimize the expression of impoliteness.

Ex. 1) -Would you like to go to the theatre? - I have an exam tomorrow.

2. –Do you like this dress? - Its colour is flashy. So we answer “No”, but indirectly, in order to be polite.